Heretics of Dune

She admired the dolbans in front of her. They were flat black slats ten molecules wide and rotating in a transparent liquid medium. Set automatically, the best Ixian dolbans admitted a predetermined level of light without much diminishing the view. Artists and antique dealers preferred them to polarizing systems, Odrade knew, because they admitted a full spectrum of available light. Their installation spoke of the uses to which this room was put - a display case for the best of the God Emperor's hoard. Yes - there was a gown that had been worn by his intended bride.



The priestly counselors were arguing fiercely among themselves at one end of the room, ignoring the false Tuek. Taraza stood nearby listening. Her expression said she thought the priests fools.



Waff stood with his Face Dancer entourage near the wide entrance door. His attention shifted from Sheeana to Odrade to Taraza and only occasionally to the arguing priests. Every movement Waff made betrayed his uncertainties. Would the Bene Gesserit really support him? Could they together override Rakian opposition by peaceful means?



Sheeana and her shielding escort came to stand beside Odrade. The girl still showed stringy muscles, Odrade observed, but she was filling out and the muscles had taken on a recognizable Bene Gesserit definition. The high planes of her cheekbones had grown softer under that olive skin, the brown eyes more liquid, but there were still red sunstreaks in her brown hair. The attention she spared for the arguing priests said she was assessing what had been revealed to her in the briefing.



"Will they really fight?" she whispered.



"Listen to them," Odrade said.



"What will the Mother Superior do?"



"Watch her carefully."



Both of them looked at Taraza standing in her group of muscular acolytes. Taraza now looked amused as she continued to observe the priests.



The Rakian group had started their argument out in the roof garden. They had brought it inside as the shadows lengthened. They breathed angrily, muttering sometimes and then raising their voices. Did they not see how the mimic Tuek watched them?



Odrade returned her attention to the horizon visible beyond the roof garden: not another sign of life out there in the desert. Any direction you looked outward from Dar-es-Balat showed empty sand. People born and raised here had a different view of life and their planet than most of those priestly counselors. This was not the Rakis of green belts and watered oases, which abounded in the higher latitudes like flowered fingers pointing into the long desert tracks. Out from Dar-es-Balat was the meridian desert that stretched like a cummerbund around the entire planet.



"I have heard enough of this nonsense!" the false Tuek exploded. He pushed one of the counselors roughly aside and strode into the middle of the arguing group, pivoting to stare into each face. "Are you all mad?"



One of the priests (It was old Albertus, by the gods!) looked across the room at Waff and called out: "Ser Waff! Will you please control your Face Dancer?"



Waff hesitated and then moved toward the disputants, his entourage close behind.



The false Tuek whirled and pointed a finger at Waff: "You! Stay where you are! I will brook no Tleilaxu interference! Your conspiracy is quite clear to me!"



Odrade had been watching Waff as the mimic Tuek spoke. Surprise! The Bene Tleilax Master had never before been addressed thus by one of his minions. What a shock! Rage convulsed his features. Humming sounds like the noises of angry insects came from his mouth, a modulated thing that clearly was some kind of language. The Face Dancers of his entourage froze but the false Tuek merely returned attention to his counselors.



Waff stopped humming. Consternation! His Face Dancer Tuek would not come to heel! He lurched into motion toward the priests. The false Tuek saw it and once more leveled a hand at him, the finger quivering.



"I told you to stay out of this! You might be able to do away with me but you'll not saddle me with your Tleilaxu filth!"



That did it. Waff stopped. Realization came over him. He shot a glance at Taraza, seeing her amused recognition of his predicament. Now, he had a new target for his rage.



"You knew!"



"I suspected."



"You... you..."



"You fashioned too well," Taraza said. "It's your own doing."



The priests were oblivious to this exchange. They shouted at the false Tuek, ordering him to shut up and remove himself, calling him a "damned Face Dancer!"



Odrade studied the object of this attack with care. How deep did the print go? Had he really convinced himself that he was Tuek?



In a sudden lull, the mimic drew himself up with dignity and sent a scornful glance at his accusers. "You all know me," he said. "You all know my years of service to the Divided God Who is One God. I will go to Him now if your conspiracy extends to that but remember this: He knows what is in your hearts!"



The priests looked as one man to Waff. None of them had seen a Face Dancer replace their High Priest. There had been no body to see. Every bit of evidence was the evidence of human voices saying things that might be lies. Belatedly, several looked at Odrade. Her voice was one of those that had convinced them.



Waff, too, was looking at Odrade.



She smiled and addressed herself to the Tleilaxu Master. "It suits our purposes that the High Priesthood not pass into other hands at this time," she said.



Waff immediately saw the advantage to himself. This was a wedge between priests and Bene Gesserit. This removed one of the most dangerous holds the Sisterhood had on the Tleilaxu.



"It suits my purposes, too," he said.



As the priests once more lifted their voices in anger, Taraza came in right on cue: "Which of you will break our accord?" she demanded.



Tuek thrust two of his counselors aside and strode across the room to the Mother Superior. He stopped only a pace from her.



"What game is this?" he asked.



"We support you against those who would replace you," she said. "The Bene Tleilax join us in this. It is our way of demonstrating that we, too, have a vote in selecting the High Priest."



Several priestly voices were raised in unison: "Is he or is he not a Face Dancer?"



Taraza looked benignly at the man in front of her: "Are you a Face Dancer?"



"Of course not!"



Taraza looked at Odrade, who said: "There seems to have been a mistake."



Odrade singled out Albertus among the priests and locked eyes with him. "Sheeana," Odrade said, "what should the Church of the Divided God do now?"



As she had been briefed to do, Sheeana stepped out of her guardian enclosure and spoke with all of the hauteur she had been taught: "They shall continue to serve God!"



"The business of this meeting appears to have been concluded," Taraza said. "If you need protection, High Priest Tuek, a squad of our guardians awaits in the hall. They are yours to command."



They could see acceptance and understanding in him. He had become a creature of the Bene Gesserit. He remembered nothing of his Face Dancer origins.



When the priests and Tuek had gone, Waff sent a single word at Taraza, speaking in the language of the Islamiyat: "Explain!"



Taraza stepped away from her guards, appearing, to make herself vulnerable. It was a calculated move they had debated in front of Sheeana. In the same language, Taraza said: "We release our grip on the Bene Tleilax."



They waited while he weighed her words. Taraza reminded herself that the Tleilaxu name for themselves could be translated as "the un-nameable." That was a label often reserved for gods.



This god obviously had not extended the discovery in here to what might be happening with his mimics among Ixians and Fish Speakers. Waff had more shocks coming. He appeared quite puzzled, though.



Waff confronted many unanswered questions. He was not satisfied with his reports from Gammu. It was a dangerous double game he played now. Did the Sisterhood play a similar game? But the Tleilaxu Lost Ones could not be shunted aside without inviting attack by the Honored Matres. Taraza herself had warned of this. Did the old Bashar on Gammu still represent a force worthy of consideration?



He voiced this question.



Taraza countered with her own question: "How did you change our ghola? What did you hope to gain?" She felt certain she already knew. But the pose of ignorance was necessary.



Waff wanted to say: "The death of all Bene Gesserit!" They were too dangerous. Yet their value was incalculable. He sank into a sulking silence, looking at the Reverend Mothers with a brooding expression that made his elfin features even more childlike.



A petulant child, Taraza thought. She warned herself then that it was dangerous to underestimate Waff. You broke the Tleilaxu egg only to find another egg inside - ad infinitum! Everything circled back to Odrade's suspicions about the contentions that might still lead them to bloody violence in this room. Had the Tleilaxu really revealed what they had learned from the whores and the other Lost Ones? Was the ghola only a potential Tleilaxu weapon?



Taraza decided to prod him once more, using the approach of her Council's "Analysis Nine." Still in the language of the Islamiyat, she said: "Would you dishonor yourself in the land of the Prophet? You have not shared openly as you said you would."



"We told you the sexual -"



"You do not share all!" she interrupted. "It's because of the ghola and we know this."



She could see his reactions. He was a cornered animal. Such animals were dangerous in the extreme. She had once seen a mongrel hound, a feral and tail-tucked survivor of ancient pets from Dan, cornered by a pack of youths. The animal turned on its pursuers, slashing its way to freedom in totally unexpected savagery. Two youths crippled for life and only one without injuries! Waff was like that animal right now. She could see his hands longing for a weapon, but Tleilaxu and Bene Gesserit had searched one another with exquisite care before coming here. She felt sure he had no weapon. Still...



Waff spoke, baited suspense in his manner. "You think me unaware of how you hope to rule us!"



"And there is the rot that the people of the Scattering took with them," she said. "Rot at the core."



Waff's manner changed. It did not do to ignore the deeper implications of Bene Gesserit thought. But was she sowing discord?



"The Prophet set a locator ticking in the minds of every human, Scattered or not," Taraza said. "He has brought them back to us with all of the rot intact."



Waff ground his teeth. What was she doing? He entertained the mad thought that the Sisterhood had clogged his mind with some secret drug in the air. They knew things denied to others! He stared from Taraza to Odrade and back to Taraza. He knew he was old with serial ghola resurrections but not old in the way of the Bene Gesserit. These people were old! They seldom looked old but they were old, old beyond anything he dared imagine.



Taraza was having similar thoughts. She had seen the flash of deeper awareness in Waff's eyes. Necessity opened new doors of reason. How deep did the Tleilaxu go? His eyes were so old! She had the feeling that whatever had been a brain in these Tleilaxu Masters was now something else - a holorecording from which all weakening emotions had been erased. She shared the distrust of emotions that she suspected in him. Was that a bond to unite them?



The tropism of common thoughts.



"You say you release your grip on us," Waff growled, "but I feel your fingers around my throat."



"Then here is a grip on our throat," she said. "Some of your Lost Ones have returned to you. Never has a Reverend Mother come back to us from the Scattering."



"But you said you knew all of the -"



"We have other ways of gaining knowledge. What do you suppose happened to the Reverend Mothers we sent out into the Scattering?"



"A common disaster?" He shook his head. This was absolutely new information. None of the returned Tleilaxu had said anything at all about this. The discrepancy fed his suspicions. Whom was he to believe?



"They were subverted," Taraza said.



Odrade, hearing the general suspicion voiced for the first time by the Mother Superior, sensed the enormous power implicit in Taraza's simple statement. Odrade was cowed by it. She knew the resources, the contingency plans, the improvised ways a Reverend Mother might use to surmount barriers. Something Out There could stop that?



When Waff did not respond, Taraza said: "You come to us with dirty hands."



"You dare say this?" Waff asked. "You who continue to deplete our resources in the ways taught you by the Bashar's mother?"



"We knew you could afford the losses if you had resources from the Scattering," Taraza said.



Waff inhaled a trembling breath. So the Bene Gesserit knew even this. He saw in part how they had learned it. Well, a way would have to be found to bring the false Tuek back under control. Rakis was the prize the Scattered Ones really sought and it might yet be demanded of the Tleilaxu.



Taraza moved even closer to Waff, alone and vulnerable. She saw her guards grow tense. Sheeana took a small step toward the Mother Superior and was pulled back by Odrade.



Odrade kept her attention on the Mother Superior and not on potential attackers. Were the Tleilaxu truly convinced that the Bene Gesserit would serve them? Taraza had tested the limits of it, no doubt of that. And in the language of the Islamiyat. But she looked very alone out there away from her guards and so near Waff and his people. Where would Waff's obvious suspicions lead him now?



Taraza shivered.



Odrade saw it. Taraza had been abnormally thin as a child and had never put on an excess ounce of fat. This made her exquisitely sensitive to temperature changes, intolerant of cold, but Odrade sensed no such change in the room. Taraza had made a dangerous decision then, so dangerous that her body betrayed her. Not dangerous to herself, of course, but dangerous to the Sisterhood. There was the most awful Bene Gesserit crime: disloyalty to their own order.



"We will serve you in all ways except one," Taraza said. "We will never become receptacles for gholas!"



Waff paled.



Taraza continued: "None of us is now nor will ever become..." she paused "... an axlotl tank."



Waff raised his right hand in the start of a gesture every Reverend Mother knew: the signal for his Face Dancers to attack.



Taraza pointed at his upraised hand. "If you complete that gesture, the Tleilaxu will lose everything. The messenger of God -" Taraza nodded over a shoulder toward Sheeana "- will turn her back upon you and the words of the Prophet will be dust in your mouths."



In the language of the Islamiyat, such words were too much for Waff. He lowered his hand but he continued to glower at Taraza.



"My ambassador said we would share everything we know," Taraza said. "You said you, too, would share. The messenger of God listens with the ears of the Prophet! What pours forth from the Abdl of the Tleilaxu?"



Waff's shoulders sagged.



Taraza turned her back on him. It was an artful move but both she and the other Reverend Mothers present knew she did it now in perfect safety. Looking across the room at Odrade, Taraza allowed herself a smile that she knew Odrade would interpret correctly. Time for a bit of Bene Gesserit punishment!



"The Tleilaxu desire an Atreides for breeding," Taraza said. "I give you Darwi Odrade. More will be supplied."



Waff came to a decision. "You may know much about the Honored Matres," he said, "but you -"



"Whores!" Taraza whirled on him.



"As you will. But there is a thing from them that your words reveal you do not know. I seal our bargain by telling you this. They can magnify the sensations of the orgasmic platform, transmitting this throughout a male body. They elicit the total sensual involvement of the male. Multiple orgasmic waves are created and may be continued by the... the female for an extended period."



"Total involvement?" Taraza did not try to hide her astonishment.



Odrade, too, listened with a sense of shock that she saw was shared by her Sisters present, even the acolytes. Only Sheeana seemed not to understand.



"I tell you, Mother Superior Taraza," Waff said, a gloating smile on his face, "that we have duplicated this with our own people. Myself even! In my anger, I caused the Face Dancer who played the... female part to destroy itself. No one... I say, no one! may have such a hold on me!"



"What hold?"



"If it had been one of these... these whores, as you call them, I would have obeyed her without question in anything." He shuddered. "I barely had the will to... to destroy..." He shook his head in bewilderment at the memory. "Anger saved me."



Taraza tried to swallow in a dry throat. "How..."



"How is it done? Very well! But before I share this knowledge I warn you: If one of you ever tries to use this power over one of us, bloody slaughter will follow! We have prepared our Domel and all of our people to respond by killing all Reverend Mothers they can find at the slightest sign that you seek this power over us!"



"None of us would do that, but not because of your threat. We are restrained by the knowledge that this would destroy us. Your bloody slaughter would not be necessary."



"Oh? Then why does it not destroy these... these whores?"



"It does! And it destroys everyone they touch!"



"It has not destroyed me!"



"God protects you, my Abdl," Taraza said. "As He protects all of the faithful."



Convinced, Waff glanced around the room and back to Taraza. "Let all know that I fulfill my bond in the land of the Prophet. This is the way of it, then..." He waved a hand to two of his Face Dancer guards. "We will demonstrate."



Much later, alone in the penthouse room, Odrade wondered if it had been wise to let Sheeana see the whole performance. Well, why not? Sheeana already was committed to the Sisterhood. And it would have aroused Waff's suspicions to send Sheeana away.



There had been obvious sensual arousal in Sheeana as she watched the Face Dancer performance. The Training Proctors would have to call in their male assistants earlier than usual for Sheeana. What would Sheeana do then? Would she try this new knowledge on the men? Inhibitions must be raised in Sheeana to prevent that! She must be taught the dangers to herself.



The Sisters and acolytes present had controlled themselves well, storing what they learned firmly in memory. Sheeana's education must be built on that observation. Others mastered such internal forces.



The Face Dancer observers had remained inscrutable, but there had been things to see in Waff. He said he would destroy the two demonstrators but what would he do first? Would he succumb to temptation? What thoughts went through his mind as he watched the Face Dancer male squirm in mind-blanking ecstasy?



In a way, the demonstration reminded Odrade of the Rakian dance she had seen in the Great Square of Keen. In the short term, the dance had been deliberately unrhythmic but the progression created a long-term rhythm that repeated itself in some two hundred... steps. The dancers had stretched out their rhythm to a remarkable degree.



As had the Face Dancer demonstrators.



Siaynoq become a sexual grip on uncounted billions in the Scattering!



Odrade thought about the dance, the long rhythm followed by chaotic violence. Siaynoq's glorious focusing of religious energies had devolved into a different kind of exchange. She thought about Sheeana's excited response to her glimpses of that dance in the Great Square. Odrade remembered asking Sheeana: "What did they share down there?"



"The dancers, silly!"



That response had not been permissible. "I've warned you about that tone, Sheeana. Do you wish to learn immediately what a Reverend Mother can do to punish you?"



The words played themselves like ghost messages in Odrade's mind as she looked at the gathering darkness outside the Dar-es-Balat penthouse. A great loneliness welled up in her. All the others had gone from this room.



Only the punished one remains!



How bright-eyed Sheeana had been in that room above the Great Square, her mind so full of questions. "Why do you always talk about hurting and punishment?"



"You must learn discipline. How can you control others when you cannot control yourself?"



"I don't like that lesson."



"None of us does very much... until later when we've learned the value of it by experience."



As intended, that response had festered long in Sheeana's awareness. In the end, she had revealed all she knew about the dance.



"Some of the dancers escape. Others go directly to Shaitan. The priests say they go to Shai-hulud."



"What of the ones who survive?"



"When they recover, they must join a great dance in the desert. If Shaitan comes there, they die. If Shaitan does not come, they are rewarded."



Odrade had seen the pattern. Sheeana's explanatory words had not been necessary beyond that point, even though the recital had been allowed to continue. How bitter Sheeana's voice had been!



"They get money, space in a bazaar, that kind of reward. The priests say they have proved that they are human."



"Are the ones who fail not human?"



Sheeana had remained silent for a long time in deep thought. The track was clear to Odrade, though: the Sisterhood's test of humanity! Her own passage into the acceptable humanity of the Sisterhood had already been duplicated by Sheeana. How soft that passage seemed in comparison to the other pains!



In the dim light of the museum penthouse, Odrade held up her right hand, looking at it, remembering the agony box, and the gom jabbar poised at her neck ready to kill her if she flinched or cried out.



Sheeana had not cried out, either. But she had known the answer to Odrade's question even before the agony box.



"They are human but different."



Odrade spoke aloud in the empty room with its displays from the Tyrant's no-chamber hoard.



"What did you do to us, Leto? Are you only Shaitan talking to us? What would you force us to share now?"



Was the fossil dance to become fossil sex?



"Who are you talking to, Mother?"



It was Sheeana's voice from the open doorway across the room. Her gray postulant's robe was only a faint shape there, growing larger as she approached.



"Mother Superior sent me for you," Sheeana said as she came to a stop near Odrade.



"I was talking to myself," Odrade said. She looked at the strangely quiet girl, remembering the gut-wrenching excitement of that moment when the Fulcrum Question had been asked of Sheeana.



"Do you wish to be a Reverend Mother?"



"Why are you talking to yourself, Mother?" There was a load of concern in Sheeana's voice. The Teaching Proctors would have their hands full removing those emotions.



"I was remembering when I asked you if you wished to be a Reverend Mother," Odrade said. "It prompted other thoughts."



"You said I must give myself to your direction in all things, holding back nothing, disobeying you in nothing."



"And you said: 'Is that all?' "



"I didn't know very much, did I? I still don't know very much."



"None of us does, child. Except that we're all in the dance together. And Shaitan will certainly come if the least of us fails."



When strangers meet, great allowance should be made for differences of custom and training.



- The Lady Jessica, from "Wisdom of Arrakis"



The last greenish line of light fell out of the horizon before Burzmali gave the signal for them to move. It was dark by the time they reached the far side of Ysai and the perimeter road that was to lead them to Duncan. Clouds covered the sky, reflecting the city's lights downward onto the shapes of the urban hovels through which their guides directed them.



These guides bothered Lucilla. They appeared out of side streets and from suddenly opened doorways to whisper new directions.



Too many people knew about the fugitive pair and their intended rendezvous!



She had come to grips with her hatred but the residue was a profound distrust of every person they saw. Hiding this behind the mechanical attitudes of a playfem with her customer had become increasingly difficult.



There was slush on the pedestrian way beside the road, most of it scattered there by the passage of groundcars. Lucilla's feet were cold before they had gone half a kilometer and she was forced to expend energy compensating for the added bloodflow in her extremities.



Burzmali walked silently, his head down, apparently lost in his own worries. Lucilla was not fooled. He heard every sound around them, saw every approaching vehicle. He hustled them off the pathway each time a groundcar approached. The cars went swishing past on their suspensors, the dirty slush flying from under their fanskirts and peppering the bushes along the road. Burzmali held her down beside him in the snow until he was sure the cars were out of sight and sound. Not that anyone riding in them could hear much except their own whirling passage.



They had been walking for two hours before Burzmali stopped and took stock of the way ahead. Their destination was a perimeter community that had been described to them as "completely safe." Lucilla knew better. No place on Gammu was completely safe.



Yellow lights cast an undershot glow on the clouds ahead of them, marking the location of the community. Their slushy progress took them through a tunnel under the perimeter road and up a low hill planted to some sort of orchard. The limbs were stark in the dim light.



Lucilla glanced upward. The clouds were thinning. Gammu had many small moons - fortress no-ships. Some of them had been placed by Teg but she glimpsed lines of new ones sharing the guardian role. They appeared to be about four times the size of the brightest stars and they often traveled together, which made their reflected light useful but erratic because they moved fast - up across the sky and below the horizon in only a few hours. She glimpsed a string of six such moons through a break in the clouds, wondering if they were part of Teg's defense system.



Momentarily, she reflected on the inherent weakness of the siege mentality that such defenses represented. Teg had been right about them. Mobility was the key to military success but she doubted that he had meant mobility on foot.



There were no easy hiding places on the snow-whitened slope and Lucilla felt Burzmali's nervousness. What could they do here if someone came? A snow-covered depression led down from their position to the left, angling toward the community. It was not a road but she thought it might be a path.



"Down this way," Burzmali said, leading them into the depression.



The snow came up to their calves.



"I hope these people are trustworthy," she said.



"They hate the Honored Matres," he said. "That's enough for me."



"The ghola had better be there!" She held back an even more angry response but could not keep herself from adding: "Their hatred isn't enough for me."



It was better to expect the worst, she thought.



She had come to a reassuring thought about Burzmali, though. He was like Teg. Neither of them pursued a course that would lead them into a dead end - not if they could help it. She suspected there were support forces concealed in the bushes around them even now.



The snow-covered trail ended in a paved pathway, gently curved inward from the edges and kept free of snow by a melt system. There was a trickle of dampness in the center. Lucilla was several steps onto this path before she recognized what it must be - a magchute. It was an ancient magnetic transport base that once had carried goods or raw materials to a pre-Scattering factory.



"It gets steeper here," Burzmali warned her. "They've carved steps in it but watch it. They're not very deep."



They came presently to the end of the magchute. It stopped at a decrepit wall - local brick atop a plasteel foundation. The faint light of stars in a clearing sky revealed crude workmanship in the bricks - typical Famine-Times construction. The wall was a mass of vines and mottled fungus. The growth did little to conceal the cracked courses of the bricks and the crude efforts to fill chinks with mortar. A single row of narrow windows looked down onto the place where the magchute debouched into a mass of bushes and weeds. Three of the windows glowed electric blue with some inner activity that was accompanied by faint crackling sounds.



"This was a factory in the old days," Burzmali said.



"I have eyes and a memory," Lucilla snapped. Did this grunting male think her completely devoid of intelligence?



Something creaked dismally off to their left. A patch of sod and weeds lifted atop a cellar door accompanied by an upward glow of brilliant yellow light.



"Quick!" Burzmali led her at a swift run across thick vegetation and down a flight of steps exposed by the lifting door. The door creaked closed behind them in a grumbling of machinery.



Lucilla found herself in a large space with a low ceiling. Light came from long lines of modern glowglobes strung along massive plasteel girders overhead. The floor was swept clean but showed scratches and indentations of activity, the locations no doubt of bygone machinery. She glimpsed movement far off across the open space. A young woman in a version of Lucilla's dragon robe trotted toward them.



Lucilla sniffed. There was a stink of acid in the room and undertones of something foul.



"This was a Harkonnen factory," Burzmali said. "I wonder what they made here?"



The young woman stopped in front of Lucilla. She had a willowy figure, elegant in shape and motion under the clinging robe. A subcutaneous glow came from her face. It spoke of exercise and good health. The green eyes, though, were hard and chilling in the way they measured everything they saw.



"So they sent more than one of us to watch this place," she said.



Lucilla put out a restraining hand as Burzmali started to respond. This woman was not what she seemed. No more than I am! Lucilla chose her words carefully. "We always know each other, it seems."



The young woman smiled. "I watched your approach. I could not believe my eyes." She swept a sneering glance across Burzmali. "This was supposed to be a customer?"



"And guide," Lucilla said. She noted the puzzlement on Burzmali's face and prayed he would not ask the wrong question. This young woman was danger!



"Weren't we expected?" Burzmali asked.



"Ahhhh, it speaks," the young woman said, laughing. Her laugh was as cold as her eyes.



"I prefer that you do not refer to me as 'it,' " Burzmali said.



"I call Gammu scum anything I wish," the young woman said. "Don't speak to me of your preferences!"



"What did you call me?" Burzmali was tired and his anger came boiling up at this unexpected attack.



"I call you anything I choose, scum!"



Burzmali had suffered enough. Before Lucilla could stop him, he uttered a low growl and aimed a heavy slap at the young woman.



The blow did not land.



Lucilla watched in fascination as the woman dropped under the attack, caught Burzmali's sleeve as one might catch a bit of fabric blowing in the wind and, in a blindingly fast pirouette whose speed almost hid its delicacy, sent Burzmali skidding across the floor. The woman dropped to a half crouch on one foot, the other prepared to kick.



"I shall kill him now," she said.



Lucilla, not knowing what might happen next, folded her body sideways, barely avoiding the woman's suddenly outthrust foot, and countered with a standard Bene Gesserit sabard that dumped the young woman on her back doubled up where the blow had caught her in the abdomen.



"A suggestion that you kill my guide is uncalled for, whatever your name is," Lucilla said.



The young woman gasped for breath, then, panting between words: "I am called Murbella, Great Honored Matre. You shame me by defeating me with such a slow attack. Why do you do that?"



"You needed a lesson," Lucilla said.



"I am only newly robed, Great Honored Matre. Please forgive me. I thank you for the splendid lesson and will thank you every time I employ your response, which I now commit to memory." She bowed her head, then leaped lightly to her feet, an impish grin on her face.



In her coldest voice, Lucilla asked: "Do you know who I am?" Out of the corners of her eyes, she saw Burzmali regain his feet with painful slowness. He remained at one side, watching the women, but anger burned his face.



"From your ability to teach me that lesson, I see that you are who you are, Great Honored Matre. Am I forgiven?" The impish grin had vanished from Murbella's face. She stood with head bowed.



"You are forgiven. Is there a no-ship coming?"



"So they say here. We are prepared for it." Murbella glanced at Burzmali.



"He is still useful to me and it is required that he accompany me," Lucilla said.



"Very good, Great Honored Matre. Does your forgiveness include your name?"



"No!"



Murbella sighed. "We have captured the ghola," she said. "He came as a Tleilaxu from the south. I was just about to bed him when you arrived."



Burzmali hobbled toward them. Lucilla saw that he had recognized the danger. This "completely safe" place had been infested by enemies! But the enemies still knew very little.



"The ghola was not injured?" Burzmali asked.



"It still speaks," Murbella said. "How odd."



"You will not bed the ghola," Lucilla said. "That one is my special charge!"



"Fair game, Great Honored Matre. And I marked him first. He is already partly subdued."



She laughed once more, with a callous abandonment that shocked Lucilla. "This way. There is a place where you can watch."



May you die on Caladan!



- Ancient Drinking Toast



Duncan tried to remember where he was. He knew Tormsa was dead. Blood had spurted from Tormsa's eyes. Yes, he remembered that clearly. They had entered a dark building and light had flared abruptly all around them. Duncan felt an ache in the back of his head. A blow? He tried to move and his muscles refused to obey.